Twain’s Mysterious Stranger

15-08-08 READING Mysterious Stranger coverSome famous books are obvi­ous mas­ter­pieces, most have a mix­ture of mer­its and flaws, but a few are just plain weird. In the last cat­e­go­ry, few would hes­i­tate to place Mark Twain’s Mys­te­ri­ous Stranger. Even attempt­ing to find and read a copy can be a con­fus­ing task. Twain’s last nov­el exist­ed in a num­ber of frag­men­tary, unfin­ished ver­sions, writ­ten in between 1897 and 1908. None were pub­lished in his life­time. His lit­er­ary execu­tor, Albert Bigelow Paine, and Fred­er­ick Dune­ka, an edi­tor at Harp­er & Broth­ers, cob­bled togeth­er a ver­sion and pub­lished it in 1916. This is the ver­sion that became known to the pub­lic. I have just reread this 1916 ver­sion in its orig­i­nal edi­tion, The Mys­te­ri­ous Stranger — A Romance by Mark Twain with Illus­tra­tions by N.C.Wyeth [shown at left]. Wyeth’s illus­tra­tions add great­ly to the plea­sure. He was one of the great­est of book illus­tra­tors in a peri­od that boast­ed Kay Niel­son, Howard Pyle, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Edmund Dulac and Arthur Rack­ham. How­ev­er, this edi­tion took extra­or­di­nary lib­er­ties with Twain’s work, a fact which was not made plain until 1963, when John S. Tuck­er pub­lished Mark Twain and Lit­tle Satan: The Writ­ing of The Mys­te­ri­ous Stranger. Twain had first attempt­ed the sto­ry in 1897, leav­ing an unti­tled frag­ment [now called the St. Peters­burg Frag­ment]. Between 1897 and 1900, Twain pro­duced a more sub­stan­tial man­u­script which he called The Chron­i­cle of Young Satan. In 1898, he pro­duced a short and much very dif­fer­ent text which he called School­house Hill, incor­po­rat­ing ele­ments from the first two. Final­ly, between 1902 and 1908, Twain pro­duced an almost com­plete ver­sion which he titled No. 44, the Mys­te­ri­ous Stranger: Being an Ancient Tale Found in a Jug and Freely Trans­lat­ed from the Jug. Tucker’s schol­ar­ship revealed that Paine and Dune­ka had relied pri­mar­i­ly on the ear­li­er Chron­i­cle of Young Satan, had removed sub­stan­tial por­tions, changed names, char­ac­ters, added bits writ­ten by them­selves, and past­ed the last chap­ter of Twain’s final ver­sion onto the pas­tiche. None of these extreme alter­ations was acknowl­edged, an act of lit­er­ary van­dal­ism and fraud that went uncor­rect­ed until the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Press pub­lished three of the orig­i­nal man­u­scripts in 1969. No.44, the Mys­te­ri­ous Stranger, Twain’s final ver­sion, did not see pop­u­lar pub­li­ca­tion until 1982, and I have final­ly read this author­i­ta­tive text. 

15-08-08 READING Wyeth illo 1It reveals a work even more pecu­liar than the 1916 ver­sion. The sto­ry is set in the year 1490, in a fic­tion­al Aus­tri­an vil­lage. The nar­ra­tor is a six­teen-year-old vil­lage boy named August Feld­ner, an appren­tice in a print-shop. Twain, who was him­self a printer’s appren­tice in Han­ni­bal, Mis­souri when he was a boy, fills the nar­ra­tive with the arcana of the print­ing trade. The print shop’s mas­ter is a sym­pa­thet­ic char­ac­ter, but there are sev­er­al vil­lains: the master’s shrewish and schem­ing wife, a fraud­u­lent magi­cian-alchemist, and a per­se­cut­ing priest. The appren­tices, among whom August counts for lit­tle, are a mixed bag of char­ac­ters, but all are obsessed with the perquisites and peck­ing order of the trade. Twain takes every occa­sion to demon­strate the super­sti­tious and cred­u­lous men­tal­i­ty of the time, using his well-honed satir­i­cal style. But he also evokes the inno­cence of child­hood and the hum­ble plea­sures or vil­lage life. Twain began writ­ing this ver­sion while he was stay­ing in a small Swiss vil­lage, which he likened to Han­ni­bal in his diary. Into this fic­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty there sud­den­ly arrives a mys­te­ri­ous stranger, a boy appar­ent­ly of August’s age, bedrag­gled, seek­ing food and shel­ter, for which he offers to work. When asked his name, he gives it as “Num­ber 44, New Series 864,962.” Twain dwells on the boy’s bewitch­ing beau­ty. Befriend­ing August, and tak­ing him into his con­fi­dence, he reveals him­self as an “angel”, in fact a rel­a­tive of Satan him­self (Satan, of course, being the rebel angel), and exist­ing out­side of space and time. He com­mu­ni­cates tele­phath­i­cal­ly with August, teach­es him how to make him­self invis­i­ble, brings him arti­cles from the future, and whisks him to moun­tain tops and Chi­na in an instant. They trav­el to the past. He also shows August human­i­ty’s hor­rors, includ­ing the burn­ing alive of a “witch”, the trag­ic lives of the poor, and the grim results of alter­nate time-lines of his­to­ry. He seems utter­ly obliv­i­ous to August’s notions of pro­pri­ety, piety, and ethics. When No.44’s dili­gence earns him a posi­tion as appren­tice, the oth­er appren­tices go on strike in resent­ment, sab­o­tag­ing an urgent print­ing job. No.44 con­jures up an army of dopple­gangers who do the work, and there is a com­ic bat­tle in which each char­ac­ter fights his own dupli­cate. Final­ly, No.44 is burnt as a witch, only to reap­pear to August and explain to him that:

Noth­ing exists; all is a dream. God — man — the world, — the sun, the moon, the wilder­ness of stars: a dream, all a dream, they have no exis­tence. Noth­ing exists save emp­ty space — and you!”… “And you are not you — you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself have no exis­tence, I am but a dream — your dream, crea­ture of your imag­i­na­tion. In a moment you will have real­ized this, then you will ban­ish me from your visions and I shall dis­solve into the noth­ing­ness out of which you made me….

15-08-08 READING Wyeth illo 3
 He explains that human ideas are self-evi­dent­ly absurd, such as a belief in “a God who could make good chil­dren as eas­i­ly as bad, yet pre­ferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them hap­py, yet nev­er made a sin­gle hap­py one; who made them prize their bit­ter life, yet stingi­ly cut it short; who gave his angels pain­less lives, yet cursed his oth­er chil­dren with bit­ing mis­eries and mal­adies of mind and body; who mouths jus­tice, and invent­ed hell; who mouths morals to oth­er peo­ple, and has none him­self; who frowns upon crimes, yet com­mits them all; who cre­ates man with­out invi­ta­tion, then tries to shuf­fle the respon­si­bil­i­ty for man’s acts upon man, instead of hon­or­ably plac­ing it where it belongs, upon him­self; and final­ly, with alto­geth­er divine obtuse­ness, invites this poor abused slave to wor­ship him!…

15-08-08 READING Wyeth illo 2It’s no won­der that Twain con­sid­ered the book unpub­lish­able. And it’s not sur­pris­ing that it was writ­ten in the shad­ow of tragedy. Of the three daugh­ters that Twain dot­ed on, one died of menin­gi­tis in 1896, at the age of twen­ty-four, anoth­er drowned in a bath­tub in 1909. Ear­li­er, his only son had died of dipthe­ria when but a tod­dler. Olivia, his wife of thir­ty-four years, to whom he was utter­ly devot­ed, died after a pro­tract­ed ill­ness while they were in Italy. Twain had plen­ty of rea­son to be bit­ter. This strange nov­el embod­ies, in one way or anoth­er, all of his life-long obses­sions, from his fas­ci­na­tion with child­hood, and with the Mid­dle Ages, to his par­ing of dual char­ac­ters, one “nor­mal” and the oth­er a kind of pagan spir­it — Tom and Huck mutat­ed into August and #44. His hatred of injus­tice and reli­gious hypocrisy are in there in spades. But most of all, the nov­el dwells on the puz­zle of suf­fer­ing and the mul­ti-faceted nature of con­scious­ness. All Twain’s doubts and tor­ments are resolved in a bizarre kind of meta­phys­i­cal solip­sism. I don’t think, how­ev­er, that this should be tak­en as a dec­la­ra­tion of Twain’s actu­al belief. Twain was a Menip­pean writer, giv­en to play­ing out con­tra­dic­to­ry schema­ta of the world in the form of satires, melo­dra­mas and bur­lesques. But there is no doubt about his using this instru­ment to deal with per­son­al anguish.

In the same year that the recov­ered text reached gen­er­al pub­li­ca­tion, a small film pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny made a rea­son­ably faith­ful cin­e­mat­ic ver­sion of the sto­ry. This is one of the odd­est “fam­i­ly films” (for it was mar­ket­ed as such) ever made. No.44’s final speech, blas­phe­mous by any Chris­t­ian stan­dards, is in the film, which would nowa­days make it non gra­ta in the U.S., even though it prob­a­bly voic­es the dis­en­chant­ment of many mod­ern Amer­i­cans. It was filmed in Aus­tria. Pro­duc­tion val­ues were low-end, but ade­quate. August was played by Chris Make­peace, a Cana­di­an child actor who had briefly been suc­cess­ful in the com­e­dy Meat­balls. No.44 was played by Lance Ker­win, a hard-work­ing juve­nile tele­vi­sion actor. The cast­ing was per­fect. Makepeace’s naïve per­sona and Kerwin’s mis­chie­vous one fit the sto­ry well. Iron­i­cal­ly, Ker­win lat­er became a drug addict, then found religion.

26166. [2] (Mark Twain) The Mys­te­ri­ous Stranger [ill. N.C. Wyeth] [1916 Harp­er Edition] 
 [not same as Esel­dorf ver­sion [Diary of Young Satan] at 22281 or No.44 version] 
26167. (Mark Twain) No.44, the Mys­te­ri­ous Stranger [Mark Twain Project text]
26173. (Joseph Csic­si­la) John S. Tuckey’s Mark Twain and Lit­tle Satan [arti­cle]
26174. (John Sut­ton Tuck­ey) Mark Twain and Lit­tle Satan: The Writ­ing of The Mys­te­ri­ous Stranger

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